Putney Swope
The sudden death during a board meeting of the chairman resulting in a vote to determine who will be his successor, when former music director Putney Swope is elected it is a surprise to all, the chairman’s still-warm body on the table, his wallet having been swiped, the board admitting “we all voted for him because we all though nobody else would,” and immediately renaming the advertising agency as Truth and Soul there are swift and sweeping changes under Swope.
Previously the only black executive employee, Swope brings in a new team as all but one of the previously dominant middle-aged white men are ushered out the door, refusing to accept business which promotes alcohol, tobacco or toy guns, losing accounts even as he offers his creatives free reign in their campaigns, controversial, confrontational, vulgar, even obscene, turning heads for sure but also creating a combustible situation with fickle consumers and investors.
Written and directed by Robert Downey and featuring a largely black cast led by Shaft’s Arnold Johnson as the title character and the first screen credit for Starsky and Hutch’s Antonio Fargas as “the Arab,” challenging and undermining the decisions of his superior but still demanding a cut of the profits, money the abiding principle in all despite lofty protestations, Putney Swope is a satire on race, consumerism, marketing and corporate responsibility, appropriately shot in monochrome other than the increasingly surreal and provocative commercials.
Promoting products and events such as Ethereal Cereal (“the heavenly breakfast!”), the Miss Redneck New Jersey pageant and the wildly inappropriate duet which accompanies the inter-racial teen romance of the Face Off anti-pimple cream, sung by two of the original stars of the Broadway production of Hair, Shelley Plimpton and Ronnie Dyson, Swope’s demand that their work be morally and socially responsible does not decree that it should have decorum.
Originally released in the summer of 1969 and capturing the complicated zeitgeist of the late sixties, the faltering sense of liberation, the encroaching disappointment and disillusionment that corruption could not be easily eliminated, as well as the more obvious sights, sounds and fashions of the iconic era, Swope cannot be dissuaded from his position that anything is possible if you believe, but as protesters hound him and he enters his Cuban revolutionary phase the empire crumbles into anarchy.
Absurdist from the outset and populated by fawning incompetents who can be hired and fired on a whim, Putney Swope makes an impact which remains true, a role-reversal where the black characters hold sway over the white who must jump at their command, but with everyone playing the same game, a parade of grotesque caricatures often referred to only by their function such as M*A*S*H‘s Allan Arbus as “Mister Bad News,” there is insufficient weight to what is presented, no formalised accusation at the establishment or demand for change, a film which succeeds in shocking but lacks substance beyond the superficial.
Putney Swope will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 28th February
